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Exploring Impact Heating of the Early Martian Climate

Kathryn Steakley, NMSU

ABSTRACT: Geological evidence implies that Mars may have had a more warm and wet environment during the late Noachian / early Hesperian era (3.5–3.8 billion years ago), but climate models struggle to reproduce such warm conditions. Prior studies with one-dimensional atmospheric models indicate that the water and energy from impacts could provide enough greenhouse warming to raise temperatures above the freezing point of liquid water for many years. We will use the NASA Ames Research Center Mars GCM to characterize potential atmospheric changes induced by impactors ranging in diameter from 50 m to 100 km on a range of early Mars surface pressure scenarios (10-mbar, 100-mbar, 300-mbar, 1-bar, 2-bar, 3-bar). Our objectives are 1) to examine the temperature behavior of the early Martian climate following impacts and determine if environmental conditions on its surface could support liquid water for extended periods of time, and 2) to quantify precipitation rates and examine rainfall patterns on a simulated early Martian surface following impacts and determine if this mechanism is possibly responsible for the formation of observed river valley networks on Mars. Examining climate conditions after impacts with a GCM will allow us to test a potential mechanism for heating the early Martian atmosphere, constrain the magnitude and temporal duration of these potential heating events, and provide insight regarding the availability of liquid water on early Mars which is relevant to its past habitability.

The Chemical History and Evolution of Titan’s Atmosphere as Revealed by ALMA

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, possesses a substantial atmosphere containing significant minorities of nitrile and hydrocarbon species, predominantly due to the photodissociation of the major gases, N2 and CH4. Titan’s methane cycle, liquid lakes, and complex organic chemistry make it an intriguing target through its similarities to Earth and the allure of its astrobiological potential. Though the existence of heavy nitrile species – such as CH3C3N, HC5N, and C3H7CN – has been inferred through Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) data, confirmation of these species has yet to be made spectroscopically. Other hydrocarbon species, such as C3H4 and C3H8 have been detected using Voyager’s Infrared Spectrometer (IRIS; Maguire et al., 1981) and later mapped by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS; Nixon et al., 2013) onboard Cassini, but abundance constraints for these species in the mesosphere is poor. To fully understand the production of these species and their spatial distribution in Titan’s atmosphere, vertical abundance profiles must be produced to use with current photochemical models. Utilizing early science calibration images of Titan obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), Cordiner et al. (2014; 2015) determined the vertical distribution of various nitriles and hydrocarbons in Titan’s atmosphere, including at least one previously undetected molecule – C2H5CN. For my dissertation project, I will calibrate and model sub-millimeter emissions from molecules in Titan’s atmosphere, and quantify variations in the spatial distribution of various species throughout its seasonal cycle by utilizing high resolution ALMA data. The main goals of this project are as follows:
1. To search for previously undetected molecules in Titan’s atmosphere through analysis of the existing public ALMA data, and/or through ALMA proposals of my own;
2. Constrain abundance profiles of detected molecular species, and provide upper abundance limits for those we cannot detect;
3. Map the spatial distribution of detected species in order to improve our understanding of Titan’s atmospheric transport and circulation;
4. Determine how these spatial distributions change over Titan’s seasonal cycle by utilizing multiple years of public ALMA data.
The majority of this work will employ the Non-linear Optimal Estimator for MultivariatE Spectral analySIS (NEMESIS) software package, developed by Oxford University (Irwin et al., 2008), to retrieve abundance and temperature information through radiative transfer models. These results will allow us to investigate the chemical evolution and history of Titan’s rich, pre-biotic atmosphere by providing valuable abundance measurements and constraints to molecular photochemical and dynamical models. We will compare our results with measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft, thereby enhancing the scientific return from both orbiter and ALMA datasets. The increased inventory of complex, organic molecules observable with ALMA’s sub-mm frequency range and high spatial resolution may also yield detections of species fundamental to the formation of living organisms, such as amino acids. Thus, by informing photochemical and dynamical models and increasing our known inventory of complex molecular species, we will also assess Titan’s potential habitability.

Title: TBD

Sten Hasselquist

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Extinction mapping with LEGUS

Lauren Kahre

The study of star formation and galaxy evolution in nearby galaxies depends on obtaining accurate stellar photometry in those galaxies. However, dust in the galaxies hinders our ability to obtain accurate stellar photometry, particularly in star-forming galaxies that have the highest concentrations of dust. This proposal presents a thesis project to develop a method for generating extragalactic extinction maps using photometry of massive stars from the Hubble Space Telescope. This photometry spans nearly 50 galaxies observed by the Legacy Extragalactic Ultraviolet Survey (LEGUS). The derived extinction maps can be used to correct other stars and Halpha maps (from the Halpha LEGUS) for extinction, and will be used to constrain changes in the dust-to-gas ratio across the galaxy sample and in different star formation rate, metallicity and morphological environments. Previous studies have found links between galaxy metallicty and the dust-to-gas mass ratio. The relationship between these two quantities can be used to constrain chemical evolution models.

Selected galaxies will also be compared to IR-derived dust maps for comparison to recent M31 results from Dalcanton et al. (2015) which found a minimum factor of 2 inconsistency between their extinction-derived maps and emission-derived maps from Draine et al. (2014).

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Utilizing Planetary Oscillations to Constrain the Interior Structure of the Jovian Planets

Ethan Dederick

Seismology has been the premier tool of study for understanding the
interior structure of the Earth, the Sun, and even other stars. Yet in this
thesis proposal, we wish to utilize these tools to understand the interior
structure of the Jovian planets, Saturn in particular. Recent observations
of spiral density structures in Saturn’s rings caused by its oscillations
have provided insight into which modes exist within Saturn and at what
frequencies. Utilizing these frequencies to compare to probable mode can-
didates calculated from Saturn models will also us to ascertain the interior
profiles of state variables such as density, sound speed, rotation, etc. Using
these profiles in a Saturn model, coupled with tweaking the interior struc-
ture of the model, i.e. the inclusion of stably stratified regions, should
allow us to explain which modes are responsible for the density structures
in the rings, as well as predict where to look to find more such structures.
In doing so, we will not only have a much greater understanding of Sat-
urn’s interior structure, but will have constructed a method that can also
be applied to Jupiter once observations of its mode frequencies become
available. In addition, we seek to explain if moist convection on Jupiter is
responsible for exciting its modes. We aim to do this by modeling Jupiter
as a 2D harmonic oscillator. By creating a resonance between moist con-
vective storms and Jovian modes, we hope to match the expected mode
energies and surface displacements of Jupiter’s oscillations.

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Public Talk: “Preparing to Explore the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope” – Dr. Jane Rigby (NASA Goddard)

Nov 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Preparing to Explore the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope

Dr. Jane Rigby (NASA Goddard, Deputy Project Scientist for JWST)

Abstract: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to be launched in 2019, will revolutionize our view of the Universe. As the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST will rewrite the textbooks and return gorgeous images and spectra of our universe. In my talk, I will show how JWST will revolutionize our understanding of how galaxies and supermassive black holes formed in the first billion years after the Big Bang, and how they evolved over cosmic time. I’ll describe how our international team is preparing for launch, how we decide what targets to observe, and how we are testing the telescope to be sure it will work in space.

More information about the telescope can be found at https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/.